Someone sent us their work on this fellow, Jerry Ireland, who claims that he caught the PTSD from his deployments to the war against terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. He founded an organization in Maine to help veterans get into farming, United Farmer Veterans. But amidst charges of animal cruelty and striking fear in his neighbors, the organization fell apart, according to the Portland Press Herald which questions his military service record;
Since he started United Farmer Veterans of Maine in 2015, Ireland has discussed his military service and resulting post-traumatic stress disorder as a way of explaining how he got into farming.
Ireland has offered conflicting details about his military service to the Portland Press Herald. Several news stories about Ireland dating back to 2015 indicate he served overseas in Afghanistan or Iraq, or both, and he has spoken at length about suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder related to his service.
Other news outlets have published similar accounts of his military service.
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His official military record, however, shows no evidence of overseas service. Ireland told the Press Herald that his service record has been mischaracterized in the media, and that his official military record contains inaccuracies and does not include classified missions. But he would not answer questions to detail his service or clarify any inaccuracies.
In an earlier Press Herald article, Ireland tells them how farming saved him from his PTSD;
Ireland is one veteran who says farming helped him climb out of a dark hole.
Ireland joined the Army so that he could pay for college, never dreaming that it would become a career. He did a couple of tours at the Pentagon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, then traveled all over the world on classified missions working for military intelligence. His post-traumatic stress arose from “stuff I saw and things I never dealt with.”
“There was a lot of nightmares, a lot of not sleeping, which over months led to some chronic tiredness,” he said. “My wife at the time would say when she would come to bed I would throw her out of bed, which I don’t have any knowledge of to this day.”
Eventually he lost everything – his house, his job, his first marriage. He began self-medicating and was drawn into an eight-month battle with drugs that ended one desperate night in a hotel room. “I basically made a deal with God that if I was alive in the morning, my life was going to be different,” Ireland said.
Another Press Herald article;
After numerous missions in support of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Ireland received a medical discharge in 2006 but continued to suffer from post-traumatic stress.
In the Bangor Daily News;
When war veterans return home, their future often is grim. Suffering from injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder, they find it hard to acclimate to society.
“They give you medication, put you on another pill to keep you from killing yourself and consider that a success,” said Jerry Ireland, who spent 10 years in the Army and served in Afghanistan.
In the Bangor Daily News he writes in a comment that “I am a farmer and a veteran from Iraq and Afghistan. These are not soldiers they are food activists that sometimes call themselves farmers.”
Well, Ireland did wear a uniform – he spent 5 years in the Wisconsin National Guard and in the Army Reserves. He was mobilized, but he never left the Continental United States. It doesn’t look like he was medically discharged and there aren’t ten years of service. He certainly didn’t deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan;
I don’t know what he thinks he saw that gave him the PTSD, unless it was those endless hours of fire guard one weekend a month and two weeks a year.
